Sean Penn denied a long-standing rumor that he hit his ex-wife Madonna with a baseball bat in 1987 in a new interview.
“I had a freaking SWAT team come into my house,” the Oscar winner recalled to the New York Times in a profile published Saturday.
“I said: ‘I’m not coming out. I’m going to finish my breakfast.’ The next thing I knew, windows were being broken all around the house and they came in. They had me in handcuffs.”
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Penn, now 63, ultimately realized that police had caught wind of reports that he had “trussed [Madonna] up like a turkey,” a phrase he admittedly did not even understand.
Later on, the “Mystic River” star began dating another woman who confronted him about the alleged incident.
“She’s looking at me like I killed her dog,” he remembered, adding, “I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.”
Penn and Madonna, now 65, infamously had a turbulent marriage that lasted from 1985 to 1989.
However, the Queen of Pop rushed to her ex-husband’s defense in 2015, saying resurfaced allegations that he had struck her throughout their union were “completely outrageous, malicious, reckless and false.”
“While we certainly had more than one heated argument … Sean has never struck me, ‘tied me up’ or physically assaulted me,” she added at the time, further calling the “Bad Boys” actor a “caring, compassionate individual.”
Looking back on his relationship with the “Vogue” singer now, Penn told the Times, “She’s someone I love.”
“It turns out it’s a lot quicker to repair a friendship after divorce if there are not kids involved,” he explained.
After separating from Madonna, the “Milk” star married Robin Wright in 1996. They welcomed two children together, daughter Dylan Penn, 33, and son Hopper Penn, 30, before divorcing in 2010.
Sean was then married to Leila George from 2020 to 2022.
Madonna, for her part, wed Guy Ritchie in 2000. They had two sons together, Rocco Ritchie, 23, and David Banda, 18, before dissolving their marriage in 2008.
The Grammy winner is also the mother of daughter Lourdes Leon, 27, with her ex-boyfriend Carlos Leon as well as three daughters she adopted while single: Mercy James, 18, and twins Stella and Estere Ciccone, 11.
